Luck of the Draw
by IceEckos12
Summary: Naruto's ability to attract danger and then escape it by sheer luck is going to kill Tsunade one day. Whether it be by heart attack or alcohol poisoning, though-well, the jury's still out on that one.


**So...my first foray into the Naruto fandom. Well, not really. This was cross-posted on Archive. My username is the same on both accounts, if you were curious. **

**Naruto doesn't belong to me. **

It all really started a few months after Naruto got back from Jiraiya's training trip across the whole freaking continent.

Sakura had been busy with the hospital (or, more specifically, trying to keep Lady Tsunade happy); Sai had been doing something sneaky (or, more specifically, playing super-secret ROOT ninja with Danzo), and Kakashi….well, who knows what the hell he was doing. All the Hokage knew was that Naruto was a powerful, bored, _not_ busy ninja, and courier mission to Suna needed an extra member.

(Besides, if Tsunade was being honest with herself, she really wanted to know if it was Team 7 itself that attracted the craziest ninja, or just Naruto. Because literally every mission she sent them on, _him_ on, ended up being A rank at the least. And that was if they were _lucky.)_

The other members of the team weren't exactly Jonin material; they were, at the most, from small, indistinct clans in the village. In fact, one of them was nursing a bum leg after a particularly nasty escort mission. If they did run into trouble, Tsunade was counting on Naruto's sheer brute strength to pull them through (God knew his intelligence wouldn't). There wasn't supposed to be any trouble, though, they were going to _Suna_ for fuck's sake; Gaara _loved_ Naruto!

Naruto waved goodbye to her from the gate (and _no_ she was not watching him go, _no_ she was not worried, no matter what Shizune said), and then disappeared into the distance. The mission was supposed to last no longer than a week, and that was counting any pit stops and/or missing nin they would run into.

Two weeks passed. Tsunade was not worried. Naruto probably fell off a cliff again, or something equally stupid. Or he was partying with Gaara, though she didn't think Gaara knew how to party.

A month passed. Tsunade sent out teams to go track the missing one down, but she was still not worried. Naruto was a resilient little shit, he would be fine, he could _definitely_ take care of himself. He had been gone _longer than this._

The teams came back empty-handed, with Gaara's polite response that yes, Naruto had been there, but had left a few weeks ago and should have been home by now. There was also a note on the bottom that asked Tsunade to keep Gaara posted, which did not help the feeling of foreboding in her gut.

Two months later, and Tsunade was a fucking wreck, though she'd never show it. Sakura was outwardly worried enough for the both of them, though, as was everyone else in the Rookie 9, plus Gai's team. Ninja traversed the country, only hesitating when they hit the borders of Fire Country, though the threat of foreign ninja was becoming less and less of a dissuasion for Naruto's increasingly desperate friends.

Then, two months and five days after Naruto left the village, he limped through the front gate, the other members of the team on his clones' backs. The boy looked downright awful; there were deep bags under his eyes, like he hadn't slept the entire time he was gone, and his only clothing, a black pair of shorts, was soaked in blood. In fact, everything was soaked in blood; Naruto's chest looked like someone had committed a massacre on it, though the wounds he did have, while expansive, were half-healed already. His teammates, on the other hand, were completely unharmed, though all of them were asleep.

But the shock of seeing Naruto, bloodied and looking like he'd just been put through a meat grinder, was nothing compared to what had occurred while they'd been gone. It was just fucking rich, that the team had somehow encountered a bunch of missing nin from some obscure ninja village to the west-and gotten caught up in a revolution that could have been much, much worse had Naruto not been there. The brat had, single-handedly, overthrown an entire_ freaking government in a month and a half_. Single-handedly, because the government had used some sort of genjutsu that had put the entire country in some deep, wakeless sleep.

It should've been impossible. Naruto should have been killed, at the very least; at the most, his involvement in the revolution should have made the tumultuous place to declare war on Fire Country, probably leading to the Fourth Shinobi War.

But no. The little bastard had overthrown the government (and defeated three S-Class ninja), established a friendship with a potentially wealthy and powerful ninja village, and brought all the chunin (including the injured one!) home alive.

Tsunade stared at him, wrestling with her emotions, before slugging the brat in the face. She really didn't have another response. Besides, he was a _moron;_ why hadn't he stopped by Sunagakure for some clothes?

And life went on.

A month or two later, Tsunade was in a very similar situation. Naruto had nothing to do, the rest of Team 7 was up to their ears in Absolutely Necessary Stuff, and there was a team that needed an extra member. This time, the Fifth Hokage looked quite thoroughly through the active ninja roster, because fuck all if she was sending Naruto again. However, it seemed as though _everyone_ was busy with Absolutely Necessary Stuff. The chunin exams were in Konoha again that year, and they really didn't have anybody to spare; preparations were done with a healthy amount of paranoia, as nobody had forgotten the last time the exams were in Konoha.

A little nervously, Tsunade put Naruto on the team. After all, the escort mission was just to the outskirts of Fire; they weren't even leaving the fucking country this time, what was the worst that could happen?

Why, she would ask herself later. Why would you even think that.

But the genin exams were happening, so Tsunade pushed Naruto from her mind and sat back to enjoy the young, bright students from the five countries. It went off, surprisingly, without a hitch; there was no assassinations, coups, attacks, or anything in between.

This, of course, was enough to make Tsunade _very nervous,_ though for the life of her she couldn't figure out why.

Then, the day after the hectic genin exams ended, it occurred to Tsunade that she hadn't seen Naruto since he'd left for his mission. He usually visited her after he finished, though maybe this time he hadn't; after all, the genin exams had made her too busy to see anyone, except for Sakura and Shizune.

Then she learned that Naruto and his team hadn't been back at all, and _fuck,_ the mission was supposed to take two or three days. He'd been gone for an entire fucking _month,_ and she hadn't noticed!

This was, of course, the moment an ANBU had slipped gracefully through her window and had announced that Naruto and his team had been found just outside the gates. The others had been fine, but Naruto's arm had nearly been sawed off at the elbow, and the only reason he still had it was because of the Kyuubi.

_What,_ Tsunade thought, unable to comprehend what she was hearing for a moment, _the fuck._

It was only thanks to her that Naruto had his arm by the end of it; in fact, the only reason he _survived_ was because of her, by the end of it. He had massive internal bleeding, head trauma, broken bones...every horrible thing she could think of, he had it.

It was nothing, though, compared to what he had stopped in the process.

Apparently there _had_ been a plan for the genin exams; Akatsuki had been gearing up to make their move, and had settled in the town just inside Fire country's borders. They'd gathered an army of cannon fodder ninja, who were going to storm Konoha the moment the tournament began, while the main members were going to take down the Kage's, and hopefully nab Naruto.

Coincidentally, that had been exactly where Naruto was going.

What had transpired afterward was a terrifying game of cat and mouse, and no one had been quite sure who was the cat and who was the mouse. Deidara, some orange-masked man named Tobi, and two other mysterious cloaked figures had tracked Naruto around the city, while the jinchuuriki desperately used every evasion tactic he'd ever learned. Simultaneously, Naruto had done his best to separate the Akatsuki and strike them down while they were alone.

Worse still, the other members of the team had been next to useless, because what were _chunin_ going to do against S-Rank missing nin? The little shit hadn't called for backup because he thought that no other ninja could be spared, which was definitely _not fucking true-Tsunade_ would've left the village herself if she'd known that Naruto was in danger.

Eventually, Naruto had struck a fatal blow against Deidara, and Tobi had reacted by picking up his teammate and leaving the battle entirely. Naruto had decided, at that moment, that it was an excellent time to split. Because while he didn't like to back down from a fight, there were still two S-Rank missing nin out there, he had a team to protect, he was injured, and he hadn't slept in a week.

Halfway back to the village, the other two Akatsuki had caught up with them; Naruto had been horribly wounded, and barely managed to escape with his life.

Still, the fact remained that Naruto had essentially single-handedly stopped an invasion of Konoha at great personal injury. If Naruto hadn't been so much of an idiot about it, Tsunade would've been half-tempted to give him a medal.

As it was, Naruto had been an idiot. He had nearly died, hadn't called for backup because he thought they were all _busy,_ and gone up against four people who had been aiming to kidnap for him for a long time.

Tsunade, once Naruto was all better, slugged him in the face again. Then, she hugged him. Because this was the second time she had nearly lost him in the last few months, and...fuck. Fuck, she wasn't crying.

The pattern continued on for months, no matter who Naruto was with. Team 7, busy as fuck; chunin team, missing a third member, with a seemingly simple mission; Naruto, the only one available.

A month later, Naruto comes home, half-broken and bruised and bloody with his team on his back, some fantastic story spilling from his lips. Again and again it happens, and at that point even _Naruto_ makes jokes about his ability to attract danger, which just goes to show how serious the problem is if he noticed a pattern at all.

Then, the pattern broke.

Tsunade sent Naruto off with a sigh, wondering what disaster would befall them this time, what revolution Naruto would stop or start, what bones he would break.

He came back, two weeks later, looking...unharmed. HIs team was equally so. They all looked bemused. Scratch that; Naruto looked bemused, the others looked gobsmacked, which Tsunade would've definitely reprimanded if she hadn't heard what had occurred.

Naruto had gathered quite a reputation in the village for always being right where the danger happened; most teams were either terrified or excited to travel with him. However, this time the attack happened at night; some immortal army come to destroy Konoha yet again. Naruto had been sleeping in his tent when it had happened; in fact, he hadn't even woken up.

There had been three other chunin on the team; none of them were very experienced, but they had all woken with a start just minutes before the attack occurred. Every one of them had been up and ready when the army arrived, but even without the surprise attack, they still should have lost. It was no insult to their ability; the immortal army was quite literally _immortal,_ and no man can fight forever.

And yet, the team had won. Three chunin against a thousand immortal men, and they had won. Naruto, the most powerful person on the team, had only woken up _after the battle had ended._

Tsunade forced herself to consider the situation.

Naruto gets sent out on mission, disaster happens. That was quite obvious; this never happened to the other members of Team 7, or any other ninja in her roster.

The team Naruto is with always comes back _unscathed_, and the _enemy is always defeated_. Now that Tsunade thought about it, that was remarkable in itself; she'd only really focused on the fact that Naruto was a danger magnet, not that the team was always alive and always unhurt. Now that she did, though, no one else had a track record like that. Everyone lost a teammate at some point; even the famous fourth Hokage had. It was natural. For that matter, everyone failed a mission at some point; that was also natural. Especially with the kind of villains Naruto was setting himself up against.

Naruto hadn't.

Tsunade had thought that one of the patterns of Naruto's missions was that the teen single-handedly stopped some great calamity, getting brutally injured in the process. However this mission had broken that pattern, or more likely it had never been one in the first place.

The only reason, Tsunade realized, that Naruto had single-handedly handled every problem was because he had been the most powerful person on the team. As a result, the others _hadn't bothered to try_. Maybe...maybe the reason that Naruto's missions always succeeded was less about the fact that he was a powerful ninja and more of a fact that he was_ there in the first place_.

The more Tsunade considered it, the more she realized it to be true; after all, didn't Naruto have inhuman luck at betting games? His mere presence brought on one thing most shinobi ran out of after a long time:

Luck.

Naruto was so lucky that his mere presence meant the aversion of a disaster. Hell, he didn't even need to lift a finger and an entire team of inexperienced chunin survived against an immortal army.

Hm.

Tsunade could work with this.

* * *

Weeks later, Tsunade cobbled together a team of some high profile ninja-and she did not fuck around when she used the words 'high profile'. Some dangerous, experienced ninja were going on the mission, and all but one of them was an elite ANBU. They would be taking the mission right into the heart of bloodstained, war torn, mysterious Amegakure, which was right in the throes of a civil war.

The mission was simple enough, for a trip to Ame: try to retrieve a spy who'd been missing for months, who had vital information for both Jiraiya and Tsunade. There was little chance the man was not dead, but alive he was invaluable. Even though the chances of his survival were little, the high risk the mission posed was nothing compared to the information the spy contained. Hence, the team of elite ANBU.

However Tsunade also had an ulterior motive; the non-ANBU member of the team was none other than Uzumaki Naruto. She'd told no one else about this, simply because anyone who heard about it would no doubt call her insane and try to have her kicked out of office, but she definitely had her reasons. It _was_ a little insane; there was no way Tsunade was going to deny that. But she was counting on Naruto's neverending luck to hopefully help them retrieve the spy, and come out of unscathed.

Without realizing it, though, Tsunade had sent a monster into the war-torn country.

A week later, the first message came, a short transmission from a routine patrol who'd been skirting the land Hanzo had once ruled. It commented on an unusual amount of activity from within the nation; explosions from a distance, the screams of dying men. Tsunade had been...uneasy, but not quite worried; after all, there were flare-ups all the time as the rebel group and the government clashed. This was nothing new.

Another week, another transmission; the activity had not died down, and in fact there was more of it. The air seemed to tremble with loud rumbles, and rain fell from the sky with an unusual ferocity. _Something_ was going on in Ame; maybe the tides of the battle had turned, maybe something had happened and the land would soon be open again…

Tsunade sat back, hands clenched in front of her, and Did Not Worry about Naruto.

It was two weeks after that when Konoha got its first group of refugees; every single one of them was either a ninja or from the family of a ninja, and every single one of them was scared, tired, and dead on their feet. Every single one of them, however, had stories of the blond-haired blue-eyed man who'd saved them.

Some called him an angel, as beautiful as he was pure. Some talked about his beaming smile, which gave them such hope after so long living in fear. Some said that his laugh sounded like chimes in the wind; others said that his gentleness calmed the mind.

Still others called him a god.

There was one man, though, who was not one of the refugees; he was a nondescript man, average in everything but brains. Tsunade had been shocked to see him, because he was the man the ANBU team had been sent to retrieve. He was also the one to confirm her growing suspicions about this mysterious 'savior', who'd brought over fifty refugees across the border, a feat that hadn't been even _attempted_ in the last few years.

"That Naruto brat of yours," The man said, swirling his sake in his cup, "He's something else. The people are really taken with him."

Tsunade had muttered something angry and derogatory, before throwing back her own drink._ Stupid_, she thought._ How could you be so stupid._

Seemingly oblivious to Tsunade's inner beratement, the man continued on blithely, "He even had those ANBU wrapped around his finger. They all agreed to fight for the rebels, and all he had to do was look at them with those big dewy eyes of his."

At that, Tsunade had thrown the cup of sake across the room and promptly put her head in her hands, because_ of course. Of course_ Naruto would become the figurehead of a rebellion movement in Amegakure, the Akatsuki HQ. What the fuck had she been thinking, sending him within a country of horrible atrocities and violence. She was done messing with luck, or fate, or whatever anyone wanted to call it; clearly she should have locked Naruto in the basement of the Hokage tower, given him a desk job and told him he couldn't be a ninja. That was the only safe place for him, after all.

A year passed; soon Konoha was not the only country to receive hordes of refugees from the war-stricken Amegakure. Over a thousand poured into the other Four Great Nations during that long year, and no one bothered to refuse them entry because they were ninja. The rosters would increase almost ten percent that year, because of all the refugees.

Even while all this was happening, however, all eyes turned to Ame, because it was obvious that something had changed. And that something had been nicknamed, reverently by the refugees, 'The Golden Shepherd'.

_For he travels with us always,_ said an old, blind refugee who died a week after entering Konoha, tired but content, _he protects us wherever we may go, and sends away the fearsome beasts that would eat us. He shines brighter than any sun, and gives hope to all who come upon him...and he never, ever breaks his promises. The Golden Shepherd will lead us to salvation, and has led us to salvation._

Only Tsunade knew who the Golden Shepherd's true identity was; not even the Rookie 9 (plus Gai's team) had an inkling of exactly where Naruto had gone. They thought that he was on another training trip with Jiraiya, and often said, _oh, if Naruto could see all these people. It's such a shame that he's missing such hope and joy._ No, only Tsunade knew that her adopted son was deep in the heart of Hanzo's territory, apparently rescuing thousands of people from the hands of their oppressors.

Tsunade stopped cursing Naruto's presence there a long time ago, because...God. How could she curse something that had brought the people of Amegakure such hope and joy?

* * *

Almost a year and a half after Tsunade sent Naruto out on that experimental mission to Amegakure, he returned home, along with the other members of the elite ANBU team. He was sent back with a new alias that was in every bingo book on the continent, the blessing of the new government of Ame, and a cult following that was growing in strength every day. His presence was enormous, the chakra he'd strained so hard to control now a lazy cloud around him; not quite restrained but not full on chaos, either. He'd clearly become stronger, wiser, and smarter while in Ame, and there was a new layer to his bright, joyful blue eyes, a calmness that Kakashi had been trying to drill into his thick skull for years. He was also much more wary of the world than he had been previously; every person was given a cursory once over, the shadows special caution, obviously a result of living in a battleground for extended period of time.

Other than that, though, Naruto was still Naruto. The moment he got back he hadn't gone to the Hokage's office like he should have, instead gravitating toward Ichiraku Ramen and scaring the hell out of Sakura, Lee, and Shikamaru, who'd been eating there that day. He still shouted loudly, though those outbursts were few and far between, and afterward he looked around guiltily like someone was going to slap him. Also, he was still oblivious beyond words: the first time Sakura mentioned 'The Golden Shepherd', Naruto had just looked confused. Tsunade had kept her face carefully blank as Sakura yelled at his ignorance, trying desperately to hold back a laugh.

It was almost a half a year, though, before Tsunade learned of Naruto's greatest achievement: somehow he had gotten in contact with the leaders of the Akatsuki, not killed them-coincidentally previous students of Jiraiya-and convinced them to stop their assault on the Jinchuuriki. The only enemy that was truly a threat to Konoha anymore was the strange masked man named Tobi, as the other Akatsuki had been disposed of by the Rookie 9 and Team Gai the previous year. (Except for Itachi. No one knew for sure where he was, but there was a rumor going around that Sasuke had finally offed his older brother).

It had been so offhand, too, like he was commenting on the weather; Tsunade and Naruto had been eating lunch together, talking quietly about what had happened in Amegakure, when the younger blond had commented, "Konan and Nagato aren't that bad, really. They were both really hurt, and confused." He'd shrugged. "I think they just needed to work out their grief."

Tsunade had stopped in the middle of wiping her face with her napkin, staring at the blond in confusion. Those names sounded awfully familiar-something Jiraiya said once. Not that she often listened to her perverted teammate, on the principle that he was a moron, but… "Who're Nagato and Konan?"

"The leaders of the Akatsuki," Naruto said flippantly, waving a hand in the air like he hadn't just dropped a bomb on her brain. "I don't know, they had something to do with all the rain. They heard I was in town, and...well. We had a bit of a fight. But I got them to see sense eventually."

Tsunade had scrubbed her face tiredly, not even sure why she was bothering to be surprised-of course Naruto had managed to 'talk sense' into the leaders of the Akatsuki. Why should she even question it anymore? It did make sense, though-she had known, by word of mouth mostly, that the leaders of Ame hadn't actually been killed off.

"Okay," She breathed after a moment, feeling something inside of her give up. "Okay, Naruto. I have another mission for you."

Naruto brightened eagerly-he'd been on leave for a few weeks, because Tsunade had decided that sending the brat on another dangerous mission would not be good for her health. "Finally, Obaa-chan!"

"Brat." She said fondly. "So there's this ninja, and he's definitely gotten an active volcano involved somehow…."

* * *

_The volcano did not, in fact, blow up._

_Luck was definitely involved._


End file.
